On these points, I still view it as an imperfect analogy. Disney has...what...maybe 600-800 seats to fill each evening at Crystal Palace. And that's drawing from MK crowds which average 45,000 daily. So yeah, Disney doesn't really care which 800 people fill those chairs.
But there are more headliner attractions per park than there are TS restaurants. And there's more capacity/throughput in those headliners than there are tables at a TS.
Looking at the testing history, you get two headliner FP's that you can book far in advance. Basically...you're eliminating your FP run at rope drop so you can move on to "something else" quicker...and getting one additional headliner FP.
And we don' know how limited each headliner is, per day (or, really, how many "prebooks" vs "day of" FP's there will be).
Your crowds at MK might be 45k per day..but how many of those are staying on site? There's about 30k rooms, on site, at WDW.
http://touringplans.com/walt-disney-world/hotels/number-rooms
I'm not sure exactly what average occupancy is...and those rooms include DVC villas...but I'd bet you're talking about somewhere in the neighborhood of 100k guests in Disney hotel rooms per night.
And 5 parks to disperse them through.
Now, of those guests, they would have 8 choices (including MSEP and Wishes) of headliners at MK...of which they'd get to choose 2. Not everyone is going to choose the same 2...which means you'll get further dispersement.
I suspect you'll see the overall EFFECT is going to be quite similar to the one the ADR system had on the restaurants (independent of the DDP).
No analogy is going to be 1:1 in this case...but looking at the ADR system gives us some history of what they've done in the past. It's a similar "resources/capacity/efficiency" challenge. Ultimately, your goals for distribution and experience might be different..but similar mechanisms.
But guests do have certain expectations for being able to ride Toy Story Mania, Soarin, Space Mountain and others. And I don't think it would be in Disney's best interest to arrogantly dismiss those expectations.
I don't think they are. I think, instead, they're saying "Stay with us and you have a better chance of seeing those things, and not having to spend a larger portion of your day waiting in line to see them".
It's not the headliners that day guests won't see...and, in fact, if it's a zero sum equation (standard FP + FP Plus = current number of FP available)..the only difference will be that more day guests will be waiting in the standby lines. Ride throughput won't change. the total number of FP's won't change...only who gets them (and, likely, not by an enormous number).
Essentially, it would be the same as allowing all the hotel guests to enter the park 2 hours early, get 2 FP's for their day, and THEN letting in the day guests and only letting them get one at a time. The only difference is the "when" and "where" they're getting those 2 extra FP's.
Overall FP+ strikes me as a nice value-added but not something which is going to have a tremendous impact on hotel reservations. There may be some modest uptick in occupancy and/or rates they are able to charge, but it's not a game changer.
Agree. But neither was ME, or DDP, or the +10 ADR advantage. As a sum total, they're nice, though. They are a nice "offset" to the premium that Disney charges for their rooms (both in terms of rates and amenities offered). I'm not sure how much they'll change anyone's mind, though.
If they try to force too much, they may be surprised at the result.
I think, all things considered, very little catches them off guard.